Connect Deeper by Listening

Man's inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively ~ Carl Rogers

Is the problem that we don’t communicate well or that we don’t listen well?

Listening is difficult because it is not about us...

Listening is about the person we are bearing witness to...the person who needs to be heard, validated and understood.

Our broken world is about speaking. Posting where we are, whom we are with, what we are doing - CONSTANTLY.

We have become so enmeshed in the social media there is no filter on what is being shared...

And there is no time or energy left to listen.

Instead, we rush to be heard, to be the one to reply to a hot topic before we even listen to the entire viewpoint.

My natural tendency is to talk until I’m heard...until the other party is in agreement with me. I like to win. I’ve learned that winning in conversation is a deceitful prize...what kind of payoff is it to leave another hurting?

Relationships cannot be competitions - they must be cooperative and compromising. To cooperate and compromise, both parties must truly listen, hear, and understand.

It takes a conscious and deliberate effort to listen, hear and understand a point of view different from your own. Yet, the return on that investment can be tremendous.

It can be deeply healing and uniting. Growth for both parties can begin and it strengthens the connection, the unity of a cause...you may discover you have the same goals, the same passions. And those were initially shared with uniqueness...yet there is sameness in our core.